F1 Belgian Grand Prix: Webber Fastest In Third Practice Session

Mark Webber set the fastest time in third practice for the 2010 Belgian Grand Prix. His time of 1:46.106 beat the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton by 0.117 seconds.

Lucas di Grassi set the first fastest lap, which was then beaten by Michael Schumacher and Sebastien Buemi, while his teammate Alguersuari narrowly missed out on the top spot. Hulkenberg than went top with 42 minutes to go, before Lewis Hamilton went even faster.

Hulkenberg went faster again as Vettel set a fastest first sector and set a fastest lap, before Force India driver Adrian Sutil set a fastest lap and Williams driver Hulkenberg beat it once again and then went back into the pits. Robert Kubica used the F-duct of his Renault to set the fastest time, which was ten seconds faster than the first fastest lap. Hamilton then went faster with a 1:46.315, showing how much the track evolves over the weekend.

Mark Webber went faster with 25 minutes to go, while news filtered through that rain would be falling on the track near the end of the session and into qualifying. Sebastian Vettel had a problem in the last corner, leaving him to be pushed back into the pit lane, for which the Red Bull garage could not initially figure out the problem, which was later called an airbox problem.

With a quarter of the session remaining, the rain got heavier and heavier, leaving all the drivers to go into the pits and effectively ending the session for many teams. However, Jaime Alguersuari went back out onto the track, quickly followed by Hispania driver Sakon Yamamoto, Lotus driver Jarno Trulli and Toro Rosso driver Sebastien Buemi.

Sakon Yamamoto's first sector was eight seconds behind the leaders, which quickly increased to 30 seconds in the second sector, before coming back into the pits with many of the other drivers. Unsurprisingly, no one was able to improve their times.